I mentioned in one of my recent posts that the reason that our intuition usually goes for the easiest tasks first is in order to build up routines on which the more difficult tasks can ride.

But why are some tasks easy while others are not? The usual reason is that an easy task is one we do often and therefore can do it without much effort or thought.

In other words it is a routine or part of a routine.

The ultimate aim is to make all our work routine. This may sound a bit boring - after all who wants to be trapped in a routine job?

Those of you who have read my book “Secrets of Productive People” will know that I gave three examples of productive people at the start of the book. These were Galileo, van Gogh and Ford. I showed how these three examples of extreme productivity were so precisely because they routinized productivity.

it’s very similar to the way that a musician builds one level of skill on top of another. Or someone learning a language becomes more and more fluent in the language the more they routinize the basic grammar and vocabulary, or how an athlete practises at higher and higher levels.

So to reiterate, that’s why the easy tasks get done first.

Article originally appeared on Get Everything Done (http://markforster.net/).